How Marijuana Helps Children With Epilepsy

One of the most compelling arguments for legalization is that medical marijuana helps children with epilepsy. There have been a plethora of success stories involving the plant and the neurological disorder. Many of which have led to the legalization of medical cannabis in different capacities and in various locations.

In the United States

One of these young patients is four-year-old Grace Rodriguez. She’s a Pasadena resident who suffers from a rare form of epilepsy called Dravet Syndrome. Before acquiring CBD oil, Rodriguez would have up to 400 seizures a day. Her parents feared she would eventually die from the condition.

Her mother, Gloria Rodriguez, claims that despite the initial controversy, she decided to give her daughter the CBD oil, which contains none of the psychoactive effects of traditional cannabis. Rodgriguez says the results were apparent almost immediately.

“I did have some people say ‘you’re going to give your baby marijuana?’ and I would say ‘yes I am, because I have tried everything else’,” Gloria said. “And really quickly, that shut down any conversation about it.”

Another success story is nine-year-old Silas Hurd, a California child not expected to make it to his tenth birthday. Medicinal cannabis has been somewhat hard to come by in Hurd’s hometown of Nevada County. But Silas’ father, Forrest Hurd, says when his son is able to use it, it means the difference between suffering from zero or as many fifty seizures in a mere 24-hour period. Hurd has since spent much of his time advocating for the plant and campaigning for local officials to adopt a policy similar to Texas.

Worldwide

The UK, who has also been behind the curve in accepting cannabis as a whole, has also recently legalized pot for certain medicinal purposes.

In fact, the first ever-UK patient was, unsurprisingly, an epilepsy sufferer. 11-year old Billy Caldwell, a child hailing from Northern Ireland. It was eventually determined that cannabis was the only solution to an otherwise untreatable problem.

This was also the case of young Luvie Parush of Israel. Parush suffered from severe epilepsy and cerebral palsy and would experience over a dozen seizures a day. However, after a few short weeks of cannabis use, Parush was seizure free.

“We saw a difference immediately and after a few weeks, we didn’t see any seizures at all,” Parush’s father says.

Final Hit: How Marijuana Helps Children With Epilepsy

Despite the fact that medical marijuana helps children with epilepsy, legalizing cannabis for children has clearly been a somewhat controversial area, to say the least. And despite Texas legalizing it for epileptic children, it’s not available for a variety of other ailments at the moment.

While Gloria Rodriguez remains elated about her own child’s rapid recovery, she believes CBD should also be available to children with other life-threatening conditions.

“I mean a year and a half ago, I thought, okay, my biggest dream is that I could get her marijuana somehow without worrying about being in trouble and here I am now,” Gloria said.

Hopefully, a larger array of parents can appease similar feelings of mental anguish, sooner, rather than later.

Tim Kohut is Green Rush Daily Staff Writer hailing from New York. His hobbies include (but are not limited to) eating eggs, owning far too many cats, and watching Rob Schneider films. He’s a self-taught expert in the cannabis industry and hopes to share his vast knowledge with fellow weed-enthusiasts around the world.